Results and Effectiveness

Due popularity, the Cabbie-Oke campaign, originally slated for four weeks, was extended by another month. After four weeks of activity, results: • 1000+ singers • 75,206 Cabbie-Oke.com.au page views • 35,815 consumers visited site • 36,056 YouTube.com/Cabbie-Oke views • 8,436 consumers sharing the video • 20,039 .mobi page views • 17,180 views Cabbie-Oke viral video • A circulation over 3 million and counting for the highly targeted PR campaign which began a ground swell of online talk and street level coverage. This also led to interest from larger media outlets resulting in opportunities with The Today Show and Nova radio.

Creative Execution

We created a media of our own by custom designing and building five fully ‘pimped-out’ Cabbie-Oke cabs. After partnering with key youth brands including Universal Music Australia, the fleet launched in February 2010 cruising nightlife locations in Sydney and Melbourne. With the latest Microsoft X-box technology and a customised version of the ‘Lips’ karaoke game, passengers choose their favourite tune for a free ride. Cameras captured their performances - the content edited and uploaded onto a branded YouTube channel and microsite within 24 hours. Each weekend, the five best performers won an Xbox 360, while voters got the chance to win a smart phone. We designed the campaign around the customer experience, getting word of mouth impact. Pre-launch, “influentials” were invited to unpublicised, private launch events and extensive ongoing social media monitoring enabled us to fix issues identified by youth, ensuring Cabbie-Oke was always the best part of their night.

Insights, Strategy and the Idea

Telstra tasked the agency with creating an underground campaign targeting the youth segment who viewed Telstra as a ‘boring Dad’s brand that didn’t offer value’. The challenge: to reconnect and start a new conversation with young Australians and be seen as culturally relevant for the first time. These 18-24 year olds crave constant connection, embrace changing subcultures and. Telstra had to drastically change the way it engaged with these young people to get them thinking ‘What are Telstra going to do next?’ What evolved was a campaign that centred on introducing a behavioural change, making Telstra entertaining and relevant to their social lives. Without overtly pushing the brand, the campaign focused on ‘changing the moment’, embracing ‘culture mashing’ – finding two seemingly unrelated parts of culture (cab rides and karaoke) and connecting them to provide talkability for young people.